


A rising dawn

by captainhurricane



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Dreamsharing, F/M, Visions in dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-18 04:18:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11866545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: Sometimes, two souls that were meant to be together in life get a second chance.





	1. Her beginning

For as long as Luna Frey can remember, she’s had the weirdest dreams. Often she is submerged, the water around her glowing and raging, her hands reaching for something that she never manages to catch. Often she is facing a beast and hears the beast’s voice thundering straight through her.

From all of those, she wakes up to piercing pain inside her chest, the birthmark in her stomach thudding with the rhythm of her restless heart.

She’s told of those dreams often to her mother, who caresses Luna’s hair and tells her there is nothing to worry about as everyone has dreams.

But do people dream this vividly every night, Luna asks.

Her mother stays silent.

Luna’s told of her dreams often to her father, but he understands even less. It frustrates Luna more than her mother’s lack of listening, since Luna and her father had always been the closest- even closer than Luna and her poor, comatose brother.

So Luna no longer tells either her mother or her father, but her brother. She faintly remembers the accident that put Ravus Frey into a coma, most of that terrible day spent in a nightmarish haze. She remembers her brother from before and the smiles he’d kept only for her.

She remembers the long years of sitting by his bedside the best, watching the beep of his heart monitor, his still hands on top of his blanket. She’s taken to caring about him with the help of their housekeeper and her protector Gentiana of the House of Shiva, but to Gentiana is left the more physical side of Ravus’ care, while Luna takes it upon herself to keep his soul intact.

Gentiana never speaks to Ravus more than necessary. She says it’s not because she doesn’t believe that Ravus hears- she says it’s because Ravus wouldn’t wish to hear from her.

So that’s why Luna is always the one by his bedside, telling him of school, of her few friends, even of the little helper robot her father had programmed to help Gentiana and who often ends up just thudding into her knees.

Even now, when the day outside their mansion is chilly and her mind is restless from schoolwork and another morning filled with her mother’s visions, even now she sits by Ravus’ bedside and holds his hand between hers. It’s never scared or disgusted her to look at him: the accident had left half of his body burnt and scarred.

It doesn’t matter what he looks like. It’s her brother.

“I once thought my dreams were gonna be like mother’s visions,” she murmurs to his prone form. “She and all the Seers that have ever been always say it’s your soul speaking. There’s no reason for my soul to not speak to me, right?”

Ravus’ finger twitches. When Luna blinks, his hand is still again.

“I know what you’d say, brother. That my soul speaks to me anyway. But what in the Astrals does it even mean?” She gives his hand a squeeze and lays it back down over his gently rising and falling chest. “Will you ever wake, brother? I could use your advice.”

She can see the gentle flicker of light around him, the indication that his soul is still where it should be. It’s just not connecting with the rest of him.

She hopes, like she’s hoped a million times before that she could help him. But once a soul and a body disconnect, only the soul can help itself.

All she can do is talk to him and hope that one day what she says might give him the push to return to them.

“There’s just something missing,” she whispers, partly to herself, partly to her still brother. She leans over him to kiss his brow before leaving him to his too long sleep.

She passes Gentiana in the hallway and nearly flinches.

“Oh! Didn’t see you there!”

Gentiana, the ageless, eccentric woman merely smiles and reaches to brush Luna’s cheek. “It is quite alright, my lady. How is your brother today?”

Luna huffs. “As he always is.”

Gentiana hums under her breath and side-steps neatly when her helper robot beeps loudly and carries what looks like a fresh stack of towels to Ravus’ room.

“It will be fine, my lady. All will be fine in time.”

“So you always say,” Luna says. “Yet it’s been years.”

Gentiana nods. “I understand the frustration, my lady.” Gentiana’s eyes open up a crack: the light in them always chills Luna to the bone. “Not soon now, Lunafreya.”

“Lunafreya?” Luna frowns.

Gentiana winks and slides past her into the room, her footsteps as soundless as ever.

Luna is left blinking. It’s not the first time Gentiana had showed herself to be something unusual: even the fact that the woman had seemingly not aged a day since Luna was five: that being twenty years ago.

“Okay then,” she murmurs to the empty hallway. What in the Astrals?

X

The thing is, it’s not like Luna is not accustomed to waiting. She’s waited for her parents during work trips, for her father during conferences, for her mother during the times she had been visiting potential suitors for her daughter- no matter how often Luna says she’d marry for love or not at all.

It’s not like she couldn’t become the President of their memory delete-company on her own, without a husband or a wife to back her up.

Her parents are the president and the vicepresident, sure and work like a well-programmed machine but there is no love between them, that much is clear. There is barely any love for their children, after all.

Luna can wait for them for as long as needed.

Luna can wait for a marriage.

She can wait for love, too. It hadn’t been found with a neighbour-boy or a fellow school-girl. She’d kissed enough to know it would ignite sparks with the right person. She’d held hands enough to know it would warm her up with the right person.

No one had ever been the right person.

She can wait for that.

She can’t wait for her brother to wake up or the dreams to solve themselves or the mystery of the longing etched deep into her bones to just… stop.

She’s tired of flinching at the sight of oceans and snakes in books and screens. She’s tired of waking up restless and sometimes seeing a flash of impossible blue around her reflection.

What does it mean? Is it her soul, telling her there is something she is indeed missing? Is it her soul telling her there is something she needs to find?

She doesn’t know the answers to any of her own questions so she goes on with her day, a piece of her missing.


	2. his life without...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noctis dreams. It's normal, albeit a little irritating, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my mental health and energy is what it is so unfortunately the updates won't be very regular. i hope you guys will hang in there at least until these two meet!
> 
> Also I put up a tentative chapter count that might change.

For as long as Noctis Callum has remembered, he’s had the oddest dreams. Often he finds himself seated on a throne, the massive room around him burned and cracked and utterly empty. Often he finds himself looking into a growing, inviting light. Sometimes he even hears a voice but to whom the voice belongs to, he can’t ever tell.

From all of those, he wakes up with piercing pain inside his ribcage and under it, his lungs empty of air like he had been stabbed. It always takes him a moment to gather his bearings and breathe normally again.

On the worse days- when his father is busy, when Gladio is busy, when even Ignis, his goddamn _brother_ , is busy- he even flinches at the sight of his own reflection: pale, messy-haired, expecting to see blood on himself.

Sometimes he could swear his eyes are blazing pink of the sunsets of his homeland. But when he blinks, they are just the regular, boring blue.

But still. He can’t quite shake the feeling that there is something he is missing.

That’s what he tells his newest friend Prompto, after their trip to the arcade, following a lecture at their university about business. Prompto’s there on a scholarship, studying, well, something technical and impossibly difficult but what always makes Prompto glow. Noctis is there because the principal is an old friend of his father, Regis Lucius Callum, the President of one of the most prestigious, rich companies on the planet.

Noctis would honestly prefer to sleep- without those dreams, thank you very much- or go fishing or roadtripping with his friends and not study business. And everything else his father deems suitable for his role as the future President of Callum Inc, dealer of memory servers and saver of past memories and past lives.

If anyone asks Noctis, to him it’s kinda bullshit. A person is what they are during one lifetime, that’s it. In a  way he does believe in reincarnation, considering the Glacian, the queen of their country who is always either very good at choosing a successor or just generally the greatest example of reincarnation there is.

Still. Memories of one life don’t go into the next. It just doesn’t happen.

Noctis still does read all the theories that have been made about dreams since the beginning of mankind: all those articles and papers about the possibility that dreams are memories from past lives. Some even claim to have proof that like-minded or soul-bonded people could share dreams.

It’s all bull. It’s gotta be.

Why would some people get such an advantage over others, just because their souls just happened to be connected?

To Noctis, it sounds a little far-fetched.

Prompto, on the other hand, loves everything about it to bits.

“It’s just so cool~” Prompto blazes on, squinting at the sunlit school yard through the cafeteria’s large windows.

“Mmmh,” says Noctis, once again more than a little tired. “But it doesn’t happen to all, right? Meeting their soulmate. In fact, it’s pretty damn rare. Dreams aren’t a very good way to go about it in my opinion.”

“But that just makes it cooler,” Prompto says, clearly preparing himself for another tirade about this and that but then his watch beeps. That contraption that had begun its life as an alarm clock of all things looks nothing like it these days: it’s sleek, modern and completely handmade by its wearer.

Noctis is just a tiny bit envious of it.

“What is it now?”

“Engineering stuff,” Prompto chirps cheerily and then he leans into Noctis’ space, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and squeezing. “I’d love it if we were soulmates, buddy.”

“Ew,” Noctis snorts and pushes his face away, snorting even louder when Prompto licks his palm. “What in the Astrals, you dumbass!”

“Tasty, tasty Noctis,” Prompto says and kisses him soundly on the cheek. “Gotta dash. Places to be, things to engineer.”

With another cheery wave, Prompto jumps up and skips towards his class.

Noctis rubs his cheek. Sometimes he does wish he had a soulmate: maybe that would get his father off his back about marrying, since according to his father, arranged marriage is still a thing.

Fuck Noctis’ feelings, right?

It doesn’t help that he’s never been in a relationship or in love: not that it’s anymore something to be ashamed of, no one’s expected to form a family at twenty-one or fall in love or experiment. Nowadays people are thankfully given the time to realize who they are first before giving that part of themselves away.

He does wish there was a soulmate- or love, or some kind of a relationship. He’d tried it with Prompto a couple of years back but it had only ended up being a slight embarrassment to both and they had never progressed past a few kisses and loads and loads of handholding.

Anyhow. Even if his dreams are a message from a potential soulmate: what in the Astrals are they trying to tell him? That he’ll die if they meet?

Sometimes the dreams are supposed to be hints at where one could find their soulmate or who they are but even that’s just urban legend.

All they do is make him confused, sleep-deprived and frustrated. The latter to the extent that he pisses Gladio off on a daily basis- then again, Gladio’s temper is legendary in the bodyguard-circles- and makes the frown between Ignis’ eyes grow deeper. Somehow it’s only Prompto whose presence doesn’t make his irritation grow.

Something secret and quiet inside Noctis whispers that it’s because Prompto reminds him of someone else.

Noctis is quick to dispel all manners of secret whispers and inside voices as hallucinations, bullshit or just figments of his often wild imagination.

Life is here and now, no matter in what manner his possibly immortal soul will go on after his body dies- which won’t be for a very long time, thanks to modern day science- and that’s that. Noctis Callum only has one life and he’ll spend it however he wants.

He only hopes that the reason for his goddamn dreams will be found.

He just wants to have a good night’s sleep.

He just wants to stop feeling like there is a hole carved straight through his soul: his soul a puzzle with a piece missing.


	3. the light of the moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dreams lead the dreamers to where they should have been all the time. To each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long!

The place that comes to Luna in the dreams of the recent weeks is somewhere she doesn’t recognize. Stone steps like that do exist all over her city, all over her country but they are relics of times long gone. The future, no, the present day is made of metal after all.

Yet, as always, the dreams persist for so long that she begins to draw what she sees. She takes her drawings to Ravus but he, of course, doesn’t have an answer.

Luna takes her drawings to Gentiana then, watches the caretaker crack open her cool grey eyes and observe Luna’s penciled sketches with a critical eye.

“It is good you have kept this skill up,” Gentiana murmurs.

“That’s not why-“ Luna starts, instantly a little frustrated. She knows she even looks like a right mess, having tossed and turned in her sleep again.

She’s drawn the stone steps leading up to a small platform. She’s drawn the ocean waves crashing against it. She’s even drawn the broken arch surrounding it. The place seems so real that she can’t help but think it _is_ real and it is somewhere she should know.

Gentiana smiles her small, joyless smile. “You know where this place is.”

“But I don’t, that’s the problem- oh, stop smiling at me,” Luna huffs when Gentiana’s smile widens to reach her eyes. “Why can’t you ever give me or anyone a straight answer?”

“That’s not the way I work,” Gentiana says gently and lays a cool palm on Luna’s cheek. “But you have seen this place in your heart for a reason. You will not find an answer within any of us. It is within you.”

“What does that even mean,” Luna says but doesn’t expect Gentiana to answer. And Gentiana doesn’t. Merely shoos Luna away from Ravus’ room entirely.

Luna knows not to go to her parents. Oh, she does love them, dearly so. She respects them and their commitment to their work and life  and children- although they seem to have forgotten that Ravus still lives, speaking of him like he is already passed- but they just do not understand.

She clutches her drawings to her chest as she begins to wander their mansion. Should she show these to her friends? At least they seem to think her dreams are pre-cognitive. Some even think they are echoes of a past life.

But that is just plain insane: although the existence of the soul is widely accepted and there have been numerous accounts of people remembering their past lives, it is just- it just sounds like too much.

So Luna leaves that thought be.

When she goes to sleep that same evening, she expects to see another flash of a stone step or a water monster or herself drowning.

She doesn’t expect to hear a voice.

_“-na! Luna, it’s too dangerous, just let me- Luna, no!”_

She wakes to her own whimpering, to her cheeks being wet and to her heart beating rapidly.

Somewhere, out there, there was- is?- someone looking for her.

Did she love him? Did he love her back? Is that why she’s never stopped feeling alone in this life?

X

The place that comes to Noctis in the dreams of the recent weeks is somewhere he faintly recognizes. While the present day loves its metal and iron and aluminum and all the recently discovered materials for the space ships and drive cores, neither or his family are young enough to not remember that stone used to be one of the greatest building materials. It still is, even on the occasional parts of their house.

The stone steps of that place Noctis dreams of echo with that faint familiarity that bothers him endlessly.

Is it somewhere he’s been to on a vacation? Is it somewhere he’s seen a picture of? Is it somewhere he’s been on a schooltrip to?

“Hey, Iggy,” he asks one day over dinner. It’s the usual quiet affair, with just Noctis and his reserved brother. Their parents either not in the house or on a business trip into the universe.

“Mm?” Ignis pokes at his perfectly made piece of steak with a careful fork. His cool grey eyes behind his glasses are thoughtful.

Noctis knows his brother is probably somewhere in his own universe. So Noctis taps the table to get his brother’s attention back to him.

“The dreams I’ve been having, you know?”

“Mm?”

“There’s this place I keep seeing lately. It feels like I’ve been there.”

Ignis’ eyebrow lifts. “It’s not unusual to dream of places we’ve been to.”

Noctis pushes a potato wedge on his plate and stares at his brother like just that would be enough to give him an answer. “Sure, but like- I don’t even remember the last time we’ve been to an ocean. Much less to somewhere like that.”

Ignis pushes his plate away from himself. “Maybe it’s somewhere I know?”

 “It’s-“ Noctis squeezes his eyes closed, just to imagine it better. The place comes to mind immediately, as fresh and clear as ever. “There are steps, dented and cracked by time and footsteps. They lead to this small platform, standing over a roaring ocean. I think it’s somewhere in a city. Like kind of an old-school city. There’s also this weird stone arch over the platform, like, uh-“ Noctis opens his eyes, staring past his brother. “You know when like in doorways leading to ancient tombs and such- does that even make sense? I remember climbing those steps and standing on that platform and I’m sure-“ there was a monster ready to rise from the ocean, something quite like a god.

Ignis tilts his head. “I’m sorry, doesn’t sound familiar to me.”

“Figured,” Noctis grumbles. “I can’t help but think I’ve been there. But I’m pretty sure I’ve never been anywhere like that.”

Ignis huffs. His smile is a tiny, brittle thing. “The human mind is a phenomenon we still can’t quite figure out, Noct. Who knows. Maybe some part of you has been there. Your soul, perhaps?”

“Sure,” Noctis says and pushes himself away from the table, no longer hungry.

When he goes to sleep that evening, he expects to see the place again and maybe feel the hole in his heart go larger and larger.

He doesn’t expect to hear a voice, a beloved, determined voice.

_“This is my duty, Noct! You have yours and I have mine!”_

_“I’ve been wanting to hear your voice for years and now it’s going to be too late- but I refuse to let it be in vain-“_

He wakes up clutching his sheets, breathless and his heart burning. Now he knows there is someone out there, there _was_ someone out there looking out for him.

Is it _that_ then that he is missing? Did he love someone once?

X

X

The voices come again to both Luna and Noctis. For her, the man never shows his face but he always calls out her name with such tenderness. For him, the woman never shows her face but she always calls out his name with such love.

 _Hey, who are you!_ He asks in his dream, faintly aware of being both asleep and awake.

 _By the light of the Astrals, I will finish my duty as the Oracle for the King of Kings,_ whispers the woman from the burning light around him.

 _Hey, please tell me your name at least,_ she says in her dream, aware that she is both asleep and awake: aware of her body, curled up in her bed and also being here, on these stone steps. She knows the man is somewhere close to her.

 _I will not let darkness take this world and if I must die because of it, so shall it be,_ says the man from the darkness around her.

Neither gets an answer.

X

X

The voices come again to both. Each time they ask for a name, for a title, for any kind of an answer. It takes numerous nights before they see face. It takes more nights to hear a name and a title: Luna never believed in past lives much but she hears his voice call out to her as the Oracle, as Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, not Luna Frey- how could it be anything else? Noctis never believed in past lives but he hears her voice call him the King of Kings, the King of light, Noctis Lucius Caellum and show him his throne, his own slumped body on it.

“Luna,” is the first thing Noctis says when he wakes from that dream, heart burning and mind buzzing. He squeezes his eyes closed and thinks of her face, her cool fingers on his cheeks. He knows there is a name and a face to the voice and the feeling. But is she real?

“Noctis,” is the first thing Luna says when she wakes from that dream, clutching her chest and her thoughts on his face and his name and the puzzle piece locking into place. She knows he’s real. Has been real. Could be real even now.

X

When Noctis ‘parents take him and Ignis with them on their next business trip, Noctis is momentarily scared it would mess up the change to dream of Lunafreya again. When she comes to him that night, as clear as the day, as clear as his family, he knows not to fear.

She’s holding a blue flower in one hand, the other holding a trident. She’s beckoning him from her small platform.

 _“My king,”_ she whispers.

He reaches for her.

X

When Luna’s parents take her with them on their next business trip, she jumps at the chance of getting a change in scenery. She hadn’t  told them of dreaming of a man and can only imagine what they would think: probably something scandalous.

But she never fears anything from Noctis, no. In those dreams she knows he would bring down the sky for her.

He’s standing with her on the stone platform, their hands intertwined. Together, they face down a serpent of the seas.

 _“My Luna,”_ he whispers and kisses the corner of her mouth.

When she turns to look at him, she instead finds herself awake, cheeks hot.

X

X

It’s entirely by accident that Noctis finds the steps. He’s taken to strolling down the city when he has free time on this trip, earbuds tugged in, hands tucked into his pockets. He just happens to turn his head past the historic buildings, the more modern ones and there- there they are. Stone steps leading into nothing but a broken archway and a platform. The ocean, if there ever was one, has long since dried out and turned into a sprawling city.

Yet to those steps Noctis goes to, heart thudding.

He fumbles for his phone and cuts off his music, even snaps a photo. There is no plaque on the steps to tell him what the steps were for, nothing to indicate them to be anything but a sad, cracked relic of ancient times. But here they are, the steps from his dreams.

He stares for so long, so deep in thought that it takes him forever to realize there is someone next to him.

He turns.

She looks at him, her blond hair in a high ponytail, her blue eyes so wide.

“Noctis?” She asks, voice as sweet as the long-gone summer.

“Luna?” He asks, voice cracking at the seams. In his dreams, she had worn white dresses, reminding him of wedding gowns. There is no trident now, no blue flower but it is her.

Her eyes well up with tears. With a start, he knows his do too.

His soul, the core of him aches for her.

“I dreamed of you,” he says, reaches for her hands. She lets him take them.

“And I dreamed of _you,”_ she says and smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry if that was too confusing at times but ya know, dreams are weird. 
> 
> thank you for reading <3

**Author's Note:**

> sorry this is super short and unbetaed ( we die like men etc) but I wanted to throw this out into the world. I have like a dozen ideas for this AU but I have no idea what to use and what to discard
> 
> also because I still haven't decided if this is gonna be a series of drabbles or an actual multichapter fic ugh... but I haven't stopped thinking about a Noctis/Luna-reincarnation AU since I finished the game a couple of days ago.


End file.
